Nobel prize winner Patrick Modiano hailed as modern Marcel Proust | Books | The Guardian

Modiano's novels all delve into the puzzle of identity, of how one can track evidence of one's existence through the traces of the past. Obsessed with the troubled and shameful period of the Occupation—during which his father had allegedly engaged in some shady dealings—Modiano returns to this theme in all of his novels, book after book building a remarkably homogeneous work. "After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all away," he says. "But I know I'll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things that are part of what I am. In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born." He writes constantly about the city of Paris, describing the evolution of its streets, its habits and its people.^{[3]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Modiano}

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/09/nobel-prize-literature-winer-patrick-modiano-hailed-modern-marcel-proust

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2014/modiano-facts.html